The Icelandic national team in men’s handball beat Algeria 32-24 at the World Cup in Qatar yesterday after a bad start, both in the game against Algeria and in their first game in the World Cup on Saturday when they lost 16-24 against Sweden.
In yesterday’s game, Iceland didn’t score a single goal during the beginning of the first half while Algeria scored six. Then Iceland got their act together and at the end of the first half they had narrowed the gap to one goal; the score was 13-12 for Algeria, ruv.is reports.
A different team seemed to have entered the court in the second half, quickly gaining a lead by three goals. When about ten minutes were left of the game, Algeria appeared to have given up and Iceland ended up winning by eight goals.
Captain Guðjón Valur Sigurðsson and Aron Pálmarsson were the strongest players of the Icelandic team, scoring eight and seven goals, respectively, while goalkeeper Björgvin Páll Gústavsson deflected 16 shots.
Saturday’s game against Sweden was described as a “tragedy” on visir.is. Although the defense and goalkeeping wasn’t too bad, the offensive play was extremely poor with Iceland’s top shooters being the shadows of themselves: Guðjón, Aron and Alexander Pettersson experienced their worst national game in a long time.
Iceland plays France tomorrow.
